Vacation

We are back from our yearly trek to Galena. This year we actually came home wishing we could have stayed longer! A rare finish for us. I guess that means it was a productive vacation.

Here are a few of our weekly highlights:
1. Our previous tours of the Galena hospital were over-rated. This year, we decided to keep it quiet, leave the ambulance at home and actually relax this vacation. We are happy to report NO broken bones and NO stitches. Lots of band-aids - but no emergencies!

2. "Slug [snail] shells smell like cow poop." That little piece of trivia is courtesy of Carra.

3. Sunfish prefer the pretzels over the corn and rice squares in Chex Mix. Finally! Someone to eat the pretzels left on the bottom of the bag!

4. Galena is small town, country folk so everyone "waves" to you as you drive by raising their pointing finger. Carra wanted to know why daddy was giving everyone the #1 finger when we drive . . . . at least it was better than another finger . . . .

5. Carra has perfected the belly-flop!






6. I know all our pictures are of the kids in the water - but then, that is all we did!

7. The kids discovered that I have a remote for my camera. They aren't allowed to touch the camera - so they had fun with the remote instead!

8. The frogging stance is important to the success of the hunt. Only having a kitchen strainer to capture the frogs is somewhat a letdown though. It didn't work well. . . but he kept trying!

9. While Carra perfected the belly-flop, Brice perfected the flip.









10. Buff floats.







11. The fishing lesson. Lasted about 10 minutes. The lines tangled and fishing was over . . . .

12. If Owen is given the right tools, he can conquer anything. Give him a life jacket - and he has no fear of the water (eventually). He became known as Owen "I'm doing it" Powers because he was so excited to be swimming in the deep end with the big kids.

We also went for a walk one evening. Armed with 2 ball point pens and a flyswatter he joined us as we went "hunting". Apparently we were looking for lions, giraffes and elephants. Fortunately, we didn't see any in northern Illinois. Probably just the wrong time of the year.